The New Inquiry (a Best American Essays 2016 Notable Essay)

Many people expect real orphans to behave like literary orphans: like portable anti-alienation devices for the people who, so to speak, take us in. This expectation is embedded in institutional rhetoric and policy. We’re expected to diversify communities, once we’ve assimilated; to educate others about cultures from which we’ve been sundered; to provide uncritical love, respect, and endorsement, not just to our adoptive families, but also to our adoptive nations, absolving them of wars, injustice, and inequality. This is not a non-story.

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Fritz Eichenberg, illustration from Wuthering Heights